Anti-Semitism and Antichrist

Anti-Semitism and Antichrist

By Terry James

While Israel is becoming the focal concern of all nations of the world, exactly as prophesied in Zechariah 12:1-3, hatred for the Jewish race is on the rise. The significance of these end-time indicators cannot be overstated. The spirit of Antichrist festers at the black heart of the growing hatred.

John the apostle put it this way, under divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit: “And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world” (1 John 4:3).

At first glance, the “spirit of Antichrist” looks to mean only the satanically engendered denial that Jesus Christ is the Savior of lost mankind—in opposition to, for example, John 3:16-18. That certainly is the primary meaning. But, the term is much more profound, especially for this late hour of this swiftly fleeting age.

The Jewish race is the “flesh” referred to in that 1 John 4: 3 passage. The world is voraciously against the Jewish race, in which God chose to come down to earth as both God and man. The world has long been intent on denigrating, and, ultimately, eradicating the Jewish race. That is because this world system belongs for the moment to Satan, who is determined to foil God’s prophetic plan to put Jesus upon the throne of David at Jerusalem.

The Romans tried to destroy the Jews. The Spanish tried to eliminate them. Hitler and the various Middle Eastern peoples have tried to get rid of the Jews. Antichrist, indwelt by Lucifer, the fallen one, will in an insane rage try to murder every Jew on the planet at the time of his brief reign of terror.

The Antichrist spirit is alive and active today. Anti-Semitism (the hatred for the flesh-and-blood people through whom Jesus the Christ came into the world) is the term that gets to the heart of the rage coming against God in this generation.

When beginning to think on this article, I asked our friend and colleague, Jack, who posts much of our Rapture Ready News, to help me with some research on the current anti-Semitism going on around the world. Now, I was aware that Jack is a master at gathering news sources, but I wasn’t prepared for the avalanche on the subject with which he soon responded.

I’m putting here the briefs he provided, so you can, if you so desire, research each of the deeply troubling stories going on in the world today.

Anti-Semitic Crimes Spike Across Houston Area

There has been a significant increase in anti-Semitic vandalism and other possible hate crimes in the Houston area in recent months, officials say.
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U.S. report notes Canada's problems with police brutality, anti-Semitism
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The announcement comes just three weeks after a report from the Community Security Trust showed a 42 percent rise in attacks on British Jews.
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French Media Bias Against Israel Blamed for Anti-Semitic Violence
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Judge's Husband, Mother Slain

Hale later wrote next to Lefkow's name: "PROBABLE JEW OR MARRIED TO A JEW."

Neither the judge nor her husband is Jewish. Both are active in the Episcopal Church.
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RUSSIA, U.S. JEWRY TEAM UP AGAINST ANTI-SEMITISM
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France launched a hunt Sunday for arsonists who destroyed a Jewish center in Paris after daubing it with anti-Semitic graffiti and swastikas – the latest in a wave of anti-Jewish acts that has unsettled the country.
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What is Happening to Tony Blair's Britain?

About six years ago I was attending an event at the local synagogue and was chastised by a member of the Council for ‘scare mongering’ about what I believed would be a catastrophic, new Intifadah in Israel and a wave of anti-Semitism in the UK.
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Swastika Graffiti on Be'er Sheva Synagogue
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Record number of anti-semitic crimes logged
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Threat of neo-Nazi march hangs over German war ceremony
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Muslim, Jewish Sites Defaced
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Religion news in brief

The Dutch Immigration Ministry is moving toward expelling three Muslim prayer leaders, or imams, who authorities have accused of spreading a radical form of Islam at a mosque in the Netherlands.
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Anti-Semitism Raises its Head in Serbia

Though very small in number, Serbia’s Jewish community is being increasingly targeted by an array of ultra-nationalist groups.

The slogans hint at a future settling of accounts. "Juden Raus", "Achtung Juden", "Jews out of Serbia" and "Death to Jews and Gipsies", they proclaim, the words providing a chilling echo of the Holocaust that decimated European Jewry more than half a century ago.

Jack indicated these news items on anti-semitism were just for starters. He could get many more if I wished. My profound thanks to you, Jack.

The international community—in my view, the politically correct term for what used to be the New World Order—has begun, in earnest, the end-time pressure prophesied throughout the Old Testament prophets. Joel the prophet foretold the eventual coming together of nations against regathered Israel:

“For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land” (Joel 3:1-2).

Did you read that last part of Joel’s prophecy? By the time this comes to pass, the nations round about will have “parted,“ or divided, the land of Israel. That prophecy is in the stage-setting phase right now! As a matter of fact, with groundwork for a Palestinian state being furiously laid at this very moment, the prophecy is far along in the stage-setting phase.

While the world at large continues to bare its teeth at an almost-cornered Israel –with the Bush Administration, unfortunately and perhaps dangerously unaware of God’s view of those who pull or push His chosen people from His direction for them – most of mainline Christianity believes and proclaims that Israel and the Jew no longer are God’s chosen. Now, they preach, either through commission or omission that they, the church, have inherited promises once given by the Almighty to the flesh-and-blood heirs of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Replacement theology saturates the large Protestant denominations in the way it has always saturated the Catholic Church. It is movement from the devil, not of God. It is Anti-Semitism, even if disguised. It is the manifestation of the Antichrist spirit.

Israel’s leadership now seems to be allowing the nation to be squeezed into the international community’s mold. Thus, in order to, hopefully, gain the love, peace, and security the terrorism-fatigued people crave. Only the God of Israel can provide that elusive peace. They are, by acquiescing to pressures exerted by the global powers, continuing that peoples’ ancient mistake of resisting the only One who can provide it.

When the final seven-year peace covenant is in place, Israel’s agreement will be not with peace and security, but with death and hell, God’s Word says (Isaiah 28:18).

God might yet put His mighty hand of control on the "Roadmap to Peace” process that looks to be the foundation for that covenant of Daniel 9: 26-27. However, all the elements for the prophesied “prince that shall come” to step onto end-time history’s stage seems to be in place.

That means that the Lord Jesus Christ must be very near the time He shouts, “Come up hither!”

“He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” (Rev. 22: 20)